Last Kiss Made You Cry
by RowenaR
Summary: Bad news for Carson Beckett. Written for my Holiday Fic Request Meme on LJ, could be part of my Protect and Survive 'verse.


**Author:** RowenaR

**Rating:** K+

**Category:** het, drama

**Disclaimer:** Stargate isn't mine because if it were... it sure would have ended differently.

**Summary: **Bad news for Carson Beckett.**  
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Holiday Fic Request Meme. This is not death!fic but it's not a happy fic, either. I guess it's kind of a pretty early _Protect and Survive_ piece but it can stand alone. I know it's Christmas but **-leah** gave me this (so I could work out all my "Rocks fall, everyone dies" tendencies in a less tragic but still unhappy way, before tackling a number of other prompts) and since I needed it, I took the prompt. Don't read if you only want happy fic during Christmas time ;)

Anyway, as always: Not a native speaker, so please excuse any weird grammatical constructions, run-ons and typos. Feedback will earn you a cookie, flames will roast my marshmellows.

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><p><strong>Last Kiss Makes You Cry<strong>

"_Well if the first kiss is a lie just get away, yeah  
>And if the last kiss makes you cry then get away now<br>There's not much time to let go by, so get away now."_

_Jonathan Seet, "If The Last Kiss Makes You Cry"_

It's his first free evening in weeks. It's the first time in weeks that he can just sit back on his couch, relax, maybe read a little and maybe enjoy some time with Laura. It's been so long since they had a quiet evening to themselves that it feels like forever. Always something came up. A medical emergency, a team trapped by the enemy, a long night of a complete system reconfiguration where every available hand had to help… it seems as if all he got of Laura in weeks were glimpses, short exchanges… To be honest, he's not even sure when the last time was that they kissed.

To be honest, he's not even sure when they last time was that they did _more_ than kissing. He frowns as he waves over his door's lock. That must have been ages ago. All he can recall are nights of falling asleep exhaustedly, often enough not even next to each other… oh. He blinks. "Laura?"

She looks at him from his couch and instead of the pleasant surprise he's seen so often since he gave her the access code to his quarters, there's something in her face that you could almost describe with startled. He resists a frown. Maybe she'd just fallen asleep and he woke her up. "What a nice surprise. I was just thinking that tonight we could maybe…"

"I'm… I'm sorry, Carson." What? He gives up resisting that frown as she gets up and takes a tentative step into his direction until she stays where she is. He ignores the slight feeling of hurt, like he did in the last few weeks whenever she said she was too tired to come over or didn't stay long enough in his lab for him to get up and at least put a kiss on her forehead or her lips.

He's not even sure if he really wants to know but he has to ask, anyway. "About what, Laura?"

She hesitates. That's not like her and it's the first time the warning bells go off in his head. Or maybe the first time he doesn't refuse to hear them. "I don't really know how to say this but… Carson, this… this just doesn't work."

He may hear the warning bells but he refuses to acknowledge that he knows what they're about. "This… this what? What doesn't work, Laura?"

In another rather untypical gesture, she moves her arms around herself, as if to hug herself. Then she seems to have pulled herself together and stands a little straighter than before. As if she just slapped on her thigh holster and is ready to go into battle. He never liked that look about her. "This _us_, Carson. I don't think it's going to work after all."

That's ridiculous, he wants to say. No, it's not, a tiny treacherous voice answers. He tries to ignore it like he ignored the bells for so long. "It's been working _fine_ for months now, Laura. What do you mean, it's not going to work after all?"

She shakes her head, her trademark impatience starting to make an appearance. He braces himself. "You and me, Carson. We had a great couple of months but… we're not made for a house with a picket fence and 2.5 kids. At least I'm not."

And that's a problem exactly _why_, he wants to ask and the tiny voice tells him it's because _he_ wouldn't mind the picket fence and would surely like to have a couple more than just 2.5 kids in the near future. He always thought Laura would want that, too. He wished she did. "Oh, I see. Really, I do. It's fine, lass, I'm not ready for that, either and…"

"It's not about being ready for it, Carson. It's about not wanting it." At all or just with _me_, is his first impulse but he swallows it. It's not fair to accuse her of something like that when they haven't even really talked about anything like that in the time they've been together. Actually, they never talked about it at all. He just assumed they'd have time for that later.

It doesn't mean that the cause is lost. Not by a long shot. Scots don't give up as easily as that on things they really want. "Look, just because you don't want that _now_, it doesn't mean it'll be _always_ like that. You know I'm a patient man, Laura. I can wait."

"Actually," she says and shakes her head, looking the tinniest bit sad now, "that's part of the problem." He doesn't understand. How could his patience be part of the problem? How can there _be_ a problem? "Don't look at me like that, Carson. You know what I mean."

"No. No, actually I don't. What's going on here, Laura? Please tell me because I really want to solve this." You know what the problem is, the voice tells him. But he doesn't. Or at least he wishes he didn't.

Again one of those sad little headshakes. "We'd never work in the long run. You'd always wait and I'd never be ready. We'd just make each other unhappy." No. No, they wouldn't. They didn't until now.

Did they?

The rhetorical question leaves him without a reply. Instead it gives him the last few weeks. And the weeks before that. Actually, all the weeks after that bomb Laura discovered in the thicket of the Atlantis computer system.

It's not like they never had time for each other or ignored each other all the time. It's just that there had been misunderstandings and irritations but he'd known things like that were normal in a relationship so he'd weathered them out and borne with Laura's temper when others would have hit back. He thought it was the best to let her vent and wait until she was done. He looks at her again. "You see it, too, don't you?"

The quiet resignation in her voice is what finally makes him stop denying it. If she'd gone and blustered about this, he'd just have sat through this. Quiet resignation, though. That's serious. "Laura…"

"Don't." Not even that was a flare of temper. It was just weary. Did he do that to her? Did he wear her out? Did something else and he didn't see it? "I'm sorry, Carson. I wish it were different because you deserve someone who appreciates your patience and your good nature. But I can't. So… this is goodbye."

She can't appreciate his patience? How can someone not appreciate patience? Suddenly it's him who feels a very rare spike of hot temper flare up deep inside. Just for a short moment, he's ready for an outburst that would rival one of hers. He wants to demand of her to tell him what the hell she means by all of this and why she stayed with him for so long if his patience was grating on her so much… but he's too old, been through too much not to know the workings of the human mind.

It's that which makes him stand there and swallow when she walks up to him and looks like she's about to lean in for one last kiss for a moment before saying, "Someday, Carson Beckett, you will make a very fortunate woman very happy. She'll love you because of who you are and she'll deserve that man. It's why I need to go now, and someday you'll understand."

Those are things people only say on the telly and in books and still she did and it didn't sound stilted or quoted. It sounded like it was her deepest wish for him, because she cares for him. It's not fair that she did that because it keeps him from stopping her from leaving like this. Everything else, it would probably have made him step up to her, tell her they could work this out, that they just needed a little time. That she just looks at him with a sad little smile and whispers "Goodbye, Carson," when she walks past him towards his door, it tells him there's nothing they can work out, nothing time could heal. Nothing time _has_ to heal.

He watches her leave and when she's gone, he slowly sits down on his couch, his head in his hands, ignoring her smell still lingering in the air. This most certainly wasn't how he planned to spend his evening. Suddenly, curling up on the couch doesn't sound so appealing anymore. Suddenly, he feels very tired. All he wants to do is sleep. But he keeps sitting there. Just a little while longer, he thinks. Just as long as her smell is still in the air. He can still figure out how to go on after that. It won't run away. Not anymore.


End file.
